


Force of Habit

by BrushDog



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrushDog/pseuds/BrushDog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say it takes time to break a bad habit, but Aoba's circumstances aren't exactly what anyone would consider normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Force of Habit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for RenAo week with the prompt of 'habits.' I sort of wanted to take a different spin on the prompt, so this is what you get.

When Aoba is younger, he has a bad habit of chewing at his lips when he's worried. At the orphanage, he bites down hard, holding his own voice in as the voices inside of his head try to push or pull him one way or the other. He always tries to hide it from the other children, from the father and sisters of the church. He doesn't want them to know. If they ask questions, he'll have to say something.

When Haruka and Naine bring him home to the warm and welcoming family life that they establish, he slowly breaks himself of it. Spending time with them leaves him little need to worry, and somehow Naine always seems to know just when the urge strikes and easily distracts Aoba, either with a game or a question or an impromptu tickle attack. Yet when he stands in the living room, saying his goodbyes to the two of them, his teeth dig into the skin of his lower lip and he tells himself that he can't cry, he can't protest. He has to be strong.

Naine sees it, he knows. He can tell from the line of his father's lips, from the concerned look in his eyes. But this time, there's no way for Naine to stop him.

Koujaku is never as good as Naine was at catching Aoba in his bad habits, but it's certainly not for a lack of effort on Koujaku's part. The first time Aoba accidentally splits his lip open, it nearly sends Koujaku into a panic. They're out at the park, waiting patiently for Tae to return, but Aoba's doubts are only mounting, fed by the whispers of the voices in his head. He bites down, trying to hold back a shout of protest at them both, and tastes blood on his tongue.

Koujaku hears the sound of pain and protest that Aoba makes, quiet as it is, and his attention is immediately all on Aoba. There's no way to hide like this, even if he wants to, which somehow makes an uncomfortable guilt turn in his belly when he sees the wide eyed shock that spreads across Koujaku's face. Despite Aoba's protests, Koujaku hurries him home where his mother gently tends to his wounded lip. She chides him, in her quiet and gentle way, and tells him that he shouldn't hurt himself like that. Koujaku agrees, of course. If there's anything worrying Aoba, he wants to help. So Aoba should let him know if there's anything that's wrong.

It isn't the same as Naine's intuition, as having his doubts and fears banished without needing to let a word from his lips, but he agrees anyway. Koujaku's always been there to save him, after all. Koujaku's his hero. He still bites down, sometimes, but when he does he remembers to open his mouth after, to call out to Koujaku, and every time he does, he knows that Koujaku will reply.

When Koujaku leaves, there's nothing to stop him.

He's all alone once again, with no one to be strong for, there's no one to save him. All that's left are the voices in his head, arguing again, louder than ever.

He holds his protests in, but he doesn't see a reason why he should. It's just like the one says, everyone abandons him, everyone's going to leave him alone. He bites down on his angry retorts at the empty reassurances that it will be all right, that they'll return to him, until his skin gives way with a fresh tang of blood and he opens his mouth and shouts "Shut up!" into the darkness of an empty house.

They're both stunned into silence, taken aback by his sudden outburst.

"You don't know anything," Aoba hisses into his pillow, angry tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. "You're hurting too but you're ignoring it! You said they wouldn't leave and they left! You said Koujaku would be there and he's not! So why should I listen to you? You're not right, you've never been right--you're just a liar!"

He pants, feeling his pulse pounding against the wound on his lip. The silence stretches, it seems like an eternity. For a moment he panics, worried that he's scared them both out, before the voice that shares his anger speaks up, wavering with excitement at his sudden victory.

"That's right, he's just lying. He doesn't care about how we feel, about how they've hurt us. We're better off without them, we don't need any of them."

Aoba tosses himself onto his back, licking against his lip and tasting the blood there as he stares up at the pale shadows the city lights cast on his ceiling.

"I don't need anyone," he repeats. "I should just destroy them all."

The third voice has nothing to say. He thinks that it's better that way.

Aoba picks up new habits. He gets into fights, picks up an old AllMate and starts Rhyme. He breaks bones and minds until one day he finds himself broken as well. He doesn't hear voices in his head, he doesn't bite his lip again, not until he realizes who it was he'd shouted at in the darkness of his room so many years ago.

But now Ren is gone and there's so many other habits that are harder to break.

It's a few months before he can stop himself from calling out to ask for directions or the weather. It takes a while longer before the weight of his bad feels familiar, since he can't quite bring himself to carry Ren's old body along knowing Ren himself is gone.

Even after almost half a year, he catches himself keeping tabs on second hand parts for Ren's model and has to force himself to close the window on his coil as he gnaws against the skin of his lip, swallowing the quiet unease that's settled in the pit of his stomach.

Yet somehow now, after all these years, the gesture has lost any sense of comfort that it might have had. It feels hollow and empty, like a bitter nostalgia leaving a bad taste in his mouth. It's probably because he's not a kid anymore, he thinks with a sigh, and nearly misses the quiet voice at the back of his head that retorts, "It's not."

Aoba startles, nearly falling off his stool, and steals a quick glance around the shop to make sure that no one saw it. Thankfully, the store is blissfully empty save for Bonjin-kun making his usual rounds.

"What, surprised that you can hear me?" the voice, his Desire, teases, a little louder now that Aoba knows what to listen for.

"That's not it," Aoba mutters under his breath, not yet certain how this arrangement should work out. Desire can hear his thoughts, can't he? He'd always been able to do that...

"Of course I can," Desire says in a lazy drawl, "I'm you. I'm inside you. You've accepted me."

'Of course I did,' Aoba thinks back, drawing his brows together at how weird it feels to communicate just by 'thinking' to himself. If he told anyone else they'd think he'd gone crazy, and he's sure he definitely is crazy, but it's at least his own kind of crazy.

Desire laughs at that. Aoba scowls. 'What did you mean, it's not?' he thinks, listening for an answer.

"That stupid habit," Desire says, "It's true that it always happened when we were young, but you weren't the one doing it."

'I think I know what I was doing with my own body.'

"Then, why did you stop it?"

'That's because...' Aoba starts, before his thoughts trail away from him. He can remember it now, that night in his room when he'd been alone save for Desire and Ren, when he'd pushed Ren--Restraint--away and embraced Desire wholeheartedly. That was when Ren's voice had started to fade, before it vanished completely. But that would mean...

"Now you're catching on," Desire says with a low hum. "It wasn't you doing it, it was him."

'Ren...'

"It's so dumb and cliched, it's just like him. Biting down, holding back, but he was always Restraint back then, wasn't he?"

Aoba doesn't put words to his thoughts, but there's a sense of agreement that fills his mind. Those times were always the moments when he'd listened to Ren the most, when curbed himself and the urge to give into Desire in hopes that Ren would be right, that someone would notice and show him kindness. Ever since Ren left him, the gesture hadn't felt the same, and it doesn't feel the same now.

'But...' the thought makes him pause a moment, 'If some of my habits were just Ren's habits, doesn't that mean some of them were yours too?'

"Mine? Of course some were mine."

'Like which ones...'

"Remember back when we'd hang out with Takumi and the guys and sometimes we'd get a really good looking chick and--"

"Aoba!!"

"It's Aoba!"

"Aoba--ah!? What's wrong with your face?!"

The sudden appearance of the three brats really does topple Aoba from his stool this time, his face beet red with the echoes of Desire's laughter reverberating through his head. Looking back on it, he thinks that he's never been more grateful for those stupid kids in his entire life.

Desire's words still stick with him. He turns them over one day at work, when he's sure that Desire's resting at least, and wonders at it. Ren was a part of him, after all, so it wouldn't be strange to think that, in a way, there's something of Ren left in him, something he can remember him by. Ren hasn't left him completely. In a strange way, despite Ren's departure, he's found himself left with more of Ren than he had before, in his memories and the awareness of everything that Ren was to him.

It's still a bittersweet feeling. Of course it would have been better to share those memories, everything that they've found about themselves with Ren himself, but some things can't be changed. Aoba thinks of everything he knows now, of what he's remembered and what Granny has told him. Elbow on the counter, he taps his fingers to his lip, wondering if Ren would worry over him if it was Ren who found himself alone, if Aoba was the one who had vanished. If Ren were somehow sitting here instead of trapped in a Rhyme field or an AllMate's body, would he pick up on his old habits again? But it really isn't something he should worry over. Ren's gone now, and all that Aoba has left of him are his memories and a silly little force of habit.

At least that's what he thinks until the phone rings.


End file.
